the silence in between
by Etspera
Summary: "He never kisses her mouth, and she is eternally grateful for that." Adrian Veidt/Laurie Juspeczyk; Post-Karnak


**Fandom**: Watchmen

**Title**: the silence in between

**Pairing:** Adrian Veidt/Laurie Juspeczyk

_Post-Karnak: "He never kisses her mouth, and she is eternally grateful for that."_

1.

The beginning is the hardest part.

Dan is in pieces and Laurie, being a girl of iron, is stronger by nature and can cope with grief silently. She refuses to leave him, even though he asks her several times.

"I won't exactly be the happiest person to be around" he explains, eyes tired and heavy with sadness.

"It doesn't matter." she murmurs, leaning into him. She tries to convince more herself than him and they both know it.

2.

Sometimes she dreams about Jon, ever-glorious and ever-powerful and never loving. She wakes up with the sorrow and tears tearing her body from its core and wonders whether Jon sees or Jon _cares_. Then she chides and reminds herself that it's over and all those past efforts and hopes bore nothing, that the Crimebusters era and the love she felt for the man with wonder eyes are over, over, over.

A month after Karnak she buries the dress of Silk Spectre deep into her wardrobe where neither Dan, nor she can find it anymore.

She starts to look for a proper job and starts (_tries_) to forget.

3.

She finds a place at a local Help Center, almost at the heart of the explosion, and breathes the guilt in everyday.

Laurie Juspeczyk is a proper guide, always helpful and smiling, never lacking in kind words. It's not an exciting job, but a rewarding one, suprisingly so. Her life almost makes sense –she never really washes off former instics and old rules- and the memories of a girl fighting and winning and _daring _fades away slowly, but surely. She organizes papers and administrates ID's, makes coffee for her boss and starts to take Chinese and Japanese classes in order to be able to translate.

When one of her colleagues wants to prank her by jumping out under her table she breaks his nose and his right arm.

"I'm sorry. Shouldn't have scared me so." she explains, and knows that Rorschach would have been so proud.

4.

Lauries meets Adrian Veidt exactly three months later. He is wearing a dark suit and a pale smile while she wears a blue dress and Dan's engagement ring.

Her hands are itching and she can't quite decide whether she should blame the ring or Ozymandias'smirk.

"Good afternoon" he greets her calmly, collected; like he hadn't fucking blow up every capital in this planet with a giant neutral bomb and kicked her in the abdomen pretty fucking hard.

He is sitting in a chair –in her office chair- but still makes her feel very small and very furious. Blood rushes to her head and adrenalin in her muscles: she is ready to peel his skin off and rub his skin raw with her bare hands.

"Get the hell out" she can only manage a whisper, because anger closes her throat and Laurie fears that she might burst from all this hate she is feeling. Silk Spectre, the girl who smiled and believed and hoped is _dead _and she wants Adrian to feel this emptiness and guilt too-

Except he does not.

Adrian tilts his head and measures her up and down, surveying and gives her an appraising look.

"I'm here to talk."

"Not interested." she spats, almost feral now; she can feel old sparks and wildness coming back.

Judging by his look, he can too.

"Come now, Laurie" he says, standing up, her name rolling off his tongue with an accent and an accusation. "We were teammates, even almost friends once."

Oh, how she remembered all gold Ozymandias, with his shrewd eyes and handsome features. Laurie feels it was hundreds of eons ago, a dream or another life ago. It makes her want to weep, seeing all this talent rotting and dying away.

Instead of crying though, she tries to fight (she always choose to fight before crying) and tries to reach for his face, to kill him, with all his utter perfectness and twistedness because it is _not fair_ that Rorschach died and Jon left and Dan is desperate and she is even more damned than them, because she gave up this war, and Adrian is just standing in her office, in this world he created, smiling and bathing in his destructional heaven and purified hell.

It does not come as a suprise that he catches her arm. Laurie notes that he smells of cologne and want.

Adrian draws her closer and whispers:

"I just want to talk."

5.

He never kisses her mouth, and she is eternally grateful for that.

"I am sorry about Jon" he murmurs one afternoon, and Laurie is bewildered that this man knows pity. He guesses her thoughts and laughs, but it doesn't reach his bright blue eyes. Adrian could have been a gentle lover in an other life or time to a different woman.

But not to her.

Because Laurie is from iron so it's never _making love_ in their case.

He wears scars all over his body, some large enough to make Laurie wonder what the hell did he do and whether it was sufficiently agonizing. He tastes like red wine and luxury, but there is a bitter fold in the corner of his mouth that makes her heart ache and jump, because he is _human_ and he can _feel _pain too_._

Adrian Veidt might take her breath away and make her scream, but he does not own her– whether he wants that or not; because honestly, Laurie doesn't know what Ozymandias wants and that leaves her confused and only a little bit terrified. He always comes silently, mouth agape, hands on her throat and she feels him shaking but not a nerve twitching on his perfectly carved, pale face.

"Are you really going to marry Dan?" he asks on a stormy, languid evening. They are already half-lovers, friends with fucking benefits (pun intended, indeed) a month and a half ago and Laurie is trying to reapplicate her shirt back. She doesn't (_cannot_) answer at first, and refuses to look him in the eye after sex, so it seems like she is completely oblivious to the question.

Adrian chuckles then, a low sound from the back of his throat. Laurie looks at him: his hair is all messy and his eyes are dark.

"I thought you were more decent than that, _Laurel_."

She rolls her eyes. Her mother used to call her that when she did something wrong on purpose.

"Please, I thought _you_ were gay."

He lets out a genuine laugh this time (_the first time_) and she wonders what the fuck she is doing.

6.

In the end, all these things: they don't matter.

They never did.

**End**

**Reviews, comments and thoughts are always welcomed. I am very curious of what you think about this story. Please, leave a note. **


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